KABUL: Education officials in Afghanistan said on Tuesday that extra Islamic studies lectures will be required for university students, but they gave few hints as to when secondary schools for girls will reopen.
Many traditional Afghan clergy who are part of the radical Islamist Taliban returned to power a year later and are sceptical of modern education.
According to Abdul Baqi Haqqani, minister for higher education, “We are adding five new religious disciplines to the existing eight.” These subjects include Islamic history, politics, and government.
From one to three mandatory religion classes each week will be offered in government universities. At a press conference, he stated that the Taliban would not order the removal of any subjects from the current curriculum.
However, due to the migration of Afghanistan’s educated elite, including academics, some colleges have changed the study of music and sculpture, which are extremely delicate topics given the Taliban’s strict interpretation of sharia law. Many other fields have also been abandoned.
